The government has been trying to pass this bill: http://www.ipd.gov.hk/eng/intellectual_property/copyright/co...
It means that satire of existing works are now illegal if done without the express permission of original copyright owner. And even more worryingly, the law allows the government to take action on the copyright owner's behalf, if the government can obtain permission from the owner. If you are a licensed television station and the government comes to you secretly threatening allow more television licenses, of course you will give the government permission.
Also, read about government's attempt to introduce "education" about the Chinese Communist Party in primary school. The textbook contains only praises of China's authoritarian regime with barely a mention of atrocities in the 50's, 60's and 70's. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-19472918 http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/04/world/asia/hong-kong-natio...
"The contents of the booklet inflamed longstanding fears of Beijing's encroachment into Hong Kong's affairs and freedoms by stating that China's ruling party is "progressive, selfless and united," and ignoring major events such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre."
But I don't think we need to find people local. I believe in telecommuting, and I think that talented people want to live in nice places. For instance, I know one american company that has several employees in Thailand and asia, simply because that's where the employees want to live.
I think letting people telecommute will be a competitive advantage for us in hiring. The office is such a mind numbing place to work, they seem designed to kill productivity. (we don't have an office, the founders share an apartment, having a larger apartment is still cheaper than having a separate office.)
But we're also working on businesses with a great degree of leverage. I think many businesses see themselves as mostly selling the product of their employees productivity, and thus more employees=more business. We're selling the product of ingenuity... and so a lot of places where other people would hire employees, we will outsource. For instance, when we can't do support in house, we'll have an employee or two who is in charge of customer service, but the primary front line customer service people would be employees of a customer-service-as-a-service provider.
> The problem so far hasn't been finding a country that is more hospitable than the USA, but in selecting from the dozen or so who are more hospitable, and trying to figure out which one is the most hospitable.
Can you list the dozen you are considering if not the complete thought process? Are you considering perhaps places in Asia like Thailand and Singapore?
Working in Thailand on such tourist visa is illegal. Getting a business visa (and thus work permit) is not easy at all. Foreigners are not allowed to hold majority in a Thai company (just as they are not allowed to own land in Thailand). Thailand is a very xenophobic country, and its laws reflect that.
Working around the visa system illegally is not difficult, and many people do that (incl. IT freelancers). But contrary to the popular image of a "care-free tropical paradise", Thailand is one of the more difficult choices to run business in/from.
But which country is better depends very highly on your preferences... for instance, Dubai and Singapore are good climates for business, but a gay person might not feel comfortable in either. (and we've considered both, fwiw.)
It also depends on your nationality- a treaty between the USA and the Netherlands gives us an opportunity to get residency in the netherlands much easier than it would for others.
So, any list I might give is going to be a bit too personal to our specific interests.
But people should consider chile. Panama has a new program which gives residency for anybody from certain countries (and there's a long list) who starts a business in Panama. (Panama City is the new miami- the cultural and financial hub of the region, or so I've been told.) Costa Rica has a lot to recommend it, such as a culture very supportive of americans, and no national military (if that's your thing). Nicaragua is poor, and thus your costs would be really low there, akin to thailand or cambodia. Thailand is really nice, but you can't easily get residency so you're border hopping to keep your visa up to date. Cambodia, though, I hear has a new residency program, but I don't know the details. Paraguay and Uruguay are also ones to consider, as relatively inexpensive and relatively pro-business countries. For some people estonia might be the right choice and for others it might be shanghai, even though china has aspects that others wouldn't like.
I've found a great deal of useful information in Sovereign Man: Confidential, and his free email list you can join at http://www.sovereignman.com
This is a good point. Living on $500/mo in a lush tropical paradise sounds fantastic.
Until you realize there are no like minded people around - you'll have no one to bounce ideas off of. This is one thing that interests me about dubai over generic-cheap-tropical-place, it's very much a driven environment.
Thailand is great for a vacation, or retirement. But I wouldn't want to hire technical talent there.
It very much a pick and choose your tradeoffs sort of situation. Can you find low living costs with a good, cosmopolitan urban core nearby? If so I think you've found shangri-la.
I suspect Buenos Aires might be on that list.
We just held the largest Javascript conference on the planet in Porto Alegre, with 900+ attendees, while RubyConf was simultaneously happening in São Paulo.
We do have excess bureaucracy for business, but it's getting better.
Santiago is a great cosmopolitan urban city, and it has quite the concentration of startups-- Startup Chile brings in 100 new startups three times a year, and that's on top of the startups that were already here (though Chile is not as entrepreneurial as the government would like it to be, Chileans seem to be very attuned to world pop culture -- anime, american bands, etc. This includes a subculture of startups that was blown up by Startup Chile.)
And Startup Chile is just one of the government programs. There are many of them, of a wide variety of types.
One bonus about Chile- some big summer movies premier here first. For instance, I saw The Avengers a week before you guys did. And usually they are in english with spanish subtitles. (I suspect the Chileans would not like the cheap acting of the spanish voiceovers that many movies get.)
But this isn't a "live on $500 a month" situation- cost of living is about what it was on the west coast of the USA. But then, I suspect dubai isn't either (but I cant' comment on Dubai having not been there.)
There's almost a need to start a wiki on this subject.
But here's some links: http://www.spencerglobal.com/chile-immigration-law/32/120-ch... http://www.allchile.net/chilewiki/index.php?title=Immigratio...
Here's a good forum to ask questions about Chile: http://www.allchile.net/chileforum/
I hope they are successful. If their offering ends up being competitive with the alternatives, we'll locate our startup there (I already have talked it over with my cofounders.)
We're currently engaging in jurisdictional arbitrage to find the best home for us, as we can do what we do from anywhere that has the internet. So, we're choosing from a list of countries based on what kind of environment they will provide us.
The problem so far hasn't been finding a country that is more hospitable than the USA, but in selecting from the dozen or so who are more hospitable, and trying to figure out which one is the most hospitable.
Imagine that-- we're struggling with too many choices for good places to locate our business, all of whom offer at least one key benefit over the USA, and most of whom offer many such.
Many people think the USA is hospitable to business, and assume that there's something shady about what we're doing that we don't just go to the bay area and be done with it. Well, here's our "Crime" in the eyes of the USA: one of our founders is from Britain while the others are from the USA. This means, while we can spend up to 6 months in Britain, and 3 months in the USA, neither country will let all three of us live there to do our startup without a great deal of hassle.
Contrast that with Chile which gave us a year of residency without any more hassle than showing up at a consulate with an application, some passport photos and a fee. We can renew that for another year, and after that first renewal, we could renew it for a final time-- and have permanent residency in Chile!
And chile is a perfectly fine place to run a business. It is a first world country, with a much more pro-business government than the USA. We'd be comfortable staying here and running our business for the next several decades.
So, I hope that Patri and the competitors to his company are all very successful -- lets make honduras one of the competitors. Already we've seen Panama grow dramatically as the best and the brightest fled Venezuela after Chavez took over.... there's still huge opportunity for jurisdictions that offer good terms.
Mobility is only going up over time!